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twelve

noun

Simple meaning

The police; law enforcement.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

twehlv
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈtwɛlv

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A group of twelve items.

  2. lawcolloquial

    A jury (normally composed of twelve persons).

  3. A twelve-bore gun.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

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More ways to use twelve

  • “There are twelve months in a year.”numeral

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Cardinal

twelve thousandchapter twelve

Other combinations

twelve yearstwelve hourstwelve hundredtwelve dayspast twelve

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • twelve noonnounCompound term

    The middle of the day.

  • twelve-tone musicnounCompound term

    A type of serial music introduced by Arnold Schoenberg.

  • twelve-tone systemnounCompound term

    A type of serial music introduced by Arnold Schoenberg.

  • twelve tribes of israelnounCompound term

    Twelve kin groups of ancient Israel each traditionally descended from one of the twelve sons of Jacob.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.